Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 22: Tue Jan 22

Memories of Last Year in Marienbad (Schlondorff, 2012): Cine Lumiere 8.30pm

Here is the introduction to tonight's event: Shot around Munich in 1960, Last Year in Marienbad soon became a classic of the French New-Wave. Directed by Alain Resnais and written by Alain Robbe-Grillet, it won the Golden Lion in Venice in 1961. Almost 50 years later in 2008, Olivier Corpet, director of IMEC (Institut Mémoires de l’Edition Contemporaine) received unedited Super 8 material shot by the actress Françoise Spira, a member of the cast of Marienbad who died only a few years after the making of the film.

In possession of this rare treasure, Olivier Corpet and Bernard-Henri Lévy remembered that Volker Schlöndorff was Resnais’ assistant on Marienbad and proposed to him that he edit and comment on the archive material. The result is this 50-minute documentary which reveals the work that went into Resnais’ masterpiece.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Olivier Corpet, director of IMEC, German film critic Gerhard Midding and curator and film-maker Adam Roberts.

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If you can't make that event I can highly recommend another film in the Polanski season at BFI Southbank tonight:

Rosemary's Baby (Polanski, 1968): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.20pm
This film screens as part of the Roman Polanski season in January and February at BFI Southbank. The details are
here.

Chicago Reader review:
'The treacherous-mate theme that has been a staple of “women's pictures” since Gaslight gets its ultimate, most agonizing development in this 1968 story about a young woman (Mia Farrow) who discovers her husband has sold her body for use by a witches' coven. The horror is more clinical than supernatural, as Polanski transforms Ira Levin's story into a metaphor for the loss of identity induced by pregnancy. A very sophisticated, very effective piece of work spun from primal images, with an excellent cast that includes John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Ralph Bellamy, Maurice Evans, Patsy Kelly, and Elisha Cook Jr..'
Dave Kehr

Here is the trailer.

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